Introduction
How can you tell when a wine is mildly corked versus you just don’t like it? Which main types of wine faults and how can you identify them? Why are inexpensive wines actually less prone to faults?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Keith Grainger, author of Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide, which won the coveted 2022 Prix de l’OIV.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
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Giveaway
One of you is going to win a personally signed copy of Keith Grainger’s terrific book, Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide.
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Highlights
- What is Keith’s latest book, Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide, about?
- What was Keith’s motivation to explore wine faults in such depth and ultimately to write his book?
- What’s the difference between a fault and a taint?
- Why does Keith describe it as a “soft boundary” between good and faulty wines?
- How can technically faulty wines still be considered excellent?
- Which weird wine fault might surprise you to learn about?
- How can you differentiate between the three main types of wine faults?
- Why are inexpensive wines less prone to faults?
- How have changes in the cork industry significantly reduced the incidence of cork taint?
- What causes cork taint?
- How do wine faults cost the industry up to 10 billion euros?
- What might surprise you about the minuscule amount of cork taint that can ruin a wine?
- How can you tell when a wine is mildly corked?
Key Takeaways
- Keith was very helpful in his discussion of one of the main flaws of wine – when it’s corked – especially when it’s only mildly so. As he mentioned, if it affects a wine at a very low level, you don’t get the mustiness and mushrooms or dry rot. But the wine will taste flat, as though somebody’s been sucking all the aromas or the flavours out of the wine. And this is a big problem for the industry.
- Keith had a terrific way of not only describing the main faults of wine, but also of how you identify them. He was precise without being overly technical. He summarized them as falling under three categories: microbiological, chemical and physical faults; each caused by different agents and each with characteristics that can be smelled, tasted, or identified visually.
- I was surprised to learn that inexpensive wines are actually less prone to faults, but Keith’s explanation makes sense as to why that’s so. They’re produced in a more factory-type manner as opposed to artisan wines and natural wines which have more room for error at the higher end.
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About Keith Grainger
Keith Grainger is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant to the wine industry. He is the author of ‘Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide’, which won the coveted 2022 Prix de l’OIV.
His previous book ‘Wine Production and Quality’ (co-authored with Hazel Tattersall) won the Gourmand Award for the Best Wine Book in the World for Professionals, and is mandatory or recommended reading for many wine courses, including university oenology programs.
Resources
- Connect with Keith Grainger
- Natalie’s Top Picks (so far) | The Best Low and No-Alcohol Wines, Mixed Drinks, Spirits and Beers On The Market
- My Books:
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 96: Which Wine Pairs Best with Blue Cheese? Janice Beaton Makes the Match
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
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Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
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- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Keith Grainger (00:00):
When it comes to faults, flaws, and taints, things aren’t always black or white. So if a wine’s not right, you say it’s faulty. If it’s something to do with the wine making, if it’s something that’s been picked up from elsewhere, it’s a taint. So if you get a wine that smells of the stables, the horse manure, or even the bandaid, that is something that’s been metabolized in the wine by yeast. A wine that is corked has nothing to do with the wine. The wine picks up the off odours from an external source. It may well be from the cork, but it’s actually nothing to do with the actual wine making. So, in theory, we should say that wine’s tainted, not faulty, but in practice we don’t.
Natalie MacLean (00:52):
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please and let’s get started.
(01:34):
Welcome to episode 268. How can you tell when a wine is mildly corked versus you just don’t like it? What are the main types of wine faults and how can you identify them? And why are inexpensive wines actually less prone to faults? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions In our chat with Keith Grainger, author of Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide which won the coveted 2022 Prix de l’OIV. One of you is going to win a personally signed copy of his terrific hardcover book that retails for $220. It’s the definitive guide on the subject. Just to note that I still have a copy of Amanda Barnes’ beautiful hardcover book, The South American Wine Guide, to give away, all you need to do is email me and let me know you’d like to win Amanda or Keith’s books or both. I’ll choose someone randomly from those who contact me at [email protected]
(02:43):
If you haven’t got your copy of Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much yet and would like to support it and this podcast that I do for you on a volunteer basis and ensure it continues, please order it from any online book retailer now. No matter where you live, it usually arrives within a day or two. And of course, the ebook is instant. Every little bit helps spread the message in this book of hope, justice, and resilience. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at nataliemaclean.com/268. If you’ve read the book or are reading it, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected].
If you have any suggestions on how to improve this podcast, please let me know. I’m also on a mission right now to find and review the best low and no alcohol wines, mixed drinks, spirits, and beers on the market. I’ve discovered some wonderful surprises, so I’ll include a link in the show notes with the ones I’ve found so far. I’d love to hear from you if you have any brands to recommend that I try. Okay on with the show.
(04:03):
Keith Grainger is an award-winning wine writer, educator, and consultant to the wine industry. He is the author of Wine Faults and Flaws: A practical guide which won the coveted Prix de l’OIV in 2022. I think his previous book was Wine Production and Quality co-authored with Hazel Tattersall, and that won the Gourmand Award for the best wine book in the world for professionals and is mandatory a recommended reading for many wine courses, including university enology programs. And he joins us now about an hour and a half north from his home in London because he’s apparently doing some child minding. Welcome, Keith. We’re so glad you’re here with us.
Keith Grainger (04:45):
Hello, everybody. Great to be among some wine lovers.
Natalie MacLean (04:50):
Excellent, excellent. I should note that you are not a part-time nanny. You’re actually minding your son’s children, right?
Keith Grainger (04:58):
That’s correct. Can I just add in addition to the roles which you stated, the role of wine writer. I also do consultant wine making. Used to be in South Africa. I haven’t been there since covid, but still working in Turkey and Cyprus.
Natalie MacLean (05:15):
Okay. So are you one of those flying winemakers that comes in and advises?
Keith Grainger (05:19):
I wouldn’t give myself such an illustrious hat. The flying winemakers tend to spend most of their time on the phone and driving round in their Porsche. Oh,
Natalie MacLean (05:27):
Oh, I see [laughter].
Keith Grainger (05:29):
I can be quite hands-on. So I’m not afraid to get dirty and actually to say things as they are rather than as the client will wish them to be.
Natalie MacLean (05:42):
Excellent. That sounds far more practical. And of course you’re good at finding faults in the first place, so I’m sure your advice would be indispensable. Alright, so let’s jump right in, Keith. In a nutshell, what is this Wine Faults and Flaws book about, aside from the obvious of course? What makes it different from perhaps anything else that’s been written on this topic and why would we find it useful?
Keith Grainger (06:04):
Okay, let me show you the book first of all.
Natalie MacLean (06:05):
Okay, there it is. Wow. Look at that.
Keith Grainger (06:09):
It should be on the screen and for reason, if you’d like, you can block me out. That’s far more attractive.
Natalie MacLean (06:14):
Those are listening on the podcast, we will put a link to this in the show notes. And so yes, how many pages are in there?
Keith Grainger (06:20):
528
Natalie MacLean (06:22):
Its a substantial book.
Keith Grainger (06:23):
Yeah, pretty big. Weighs well over a kilo. It is big. It’s available in hard back, and as an ebook. It is actually available on Kindle. But why anyone would buy this on Kindle, God only knows. So I probably would recommend the hard back and maybe even the ebook if you like to search for things.
Natalie MacLean (06:42):
Sure.
Keith Grainger (06:43):
So what’s it about? Well, a detailed discussion of wine faults. That’s pretty obvious. We look at each fault, sort of what it is in basic terms. So a lot of misunderstanding just on the use of words. How you can detect the fault? How you can detect it in the wine in the glass by seeing, for some faults, by smelling others and obviously by tasting front other faults. Some faults you can see, some of you can smell, some of you can only taste. Also, look at how you can detect the fault by laboratory analysis, which probably for our viewers is not that important. But let me say this book is a bridge between a readable book and a scientific book. Most wine people don’t read scientific books. They’re too technical. It’s hard to understand. Scientists speak their own language all the time. And most scientists don’t read wine writers books. They find them too full of anecdotes, not enough rigorous, et cetera.
Natalie MacLean
Sure.
Keith Grainger
I’ve tried to do a bridge between the two. So to do a highly readable book, but something which contains detail, signs for those who want it. So for the faults, we look at what stage of production can it occur? Maybe between wine making, maybe even in the vineyard before the wine making, sometimes in maturation, sometimes in storage. Look at how the fault might be prevented. This is of interest even for the wine because poor storage can bring on some faults. Whether an affected wine is treatable by the professionals in the winery or even by the consumer at home. Perhaps a little trick I might give you later on how to treat one of the faults.
Natalie MacLean
Yes.
Keith Grainger
I say the detailed science and really someone said, if it’s not in this book about wine faults, you probably don’t want or need to know.
Natalie MacLean (08:42):
Oh that’s good. So comprehensive and yet, as you say, readable and it keeps you going. Because you have some great stories which you’re going to dive into. So what drew you to this story? Why wine faults? I mean, in a world of other topics, what intrigued you about this particular area, Keith?
Keith Grainger (08:58):
It’s funny. Just a couple of months ago, a colleague of mine died, a guy called Trevor Elliott, who was a great wine writer and educator. Also authored in my mind of the best book on the wines of Madeira. That was his area of expertise. Trevor and I were in Bordeaux, and we are going back now almost 20 years, and we were both together at the same sit down seminar, presentation, masterclass, whatever we wanted to call it, which was looking at some basic Bordeaux wines that carried the appellation Bordeaux or Bordeaux Superior. And wines were presented though in front of us on the table. When the wines were first pulled, we both gave a bit of a look to each other, but when we came to the second wine, picked up the glass and immediately got that nose of mushroom, damp sack, dry rot, all the symptoms of what we normally refer to as corked wine. Trevor and I looked at each other exactly the same time, thought God this wine is so badly corked, as we would say, as to be totally undrinkable.
So I never liked to make a fuss when these things happened. So I slide out of my chair, I went up to the front bench where the panel was sitting and to the maker of the wine and said try to have a nose of this in my best French, which isn’t that great, and he sniffed the wine and said c’est parfait monsieur, pas de problem [laughter].
Natalie MacLean (10:23):
You are wrong [laughter].
Keith Grainger (10:26):
[laughter] So I said not a word. I saw the scowls from other tasting participants, but realize of course, that even professionals often have a lot to learn about wine faults. One of the things that does happen, of course, is wine makers get partially desensitized to certain faults. It’s very tricky if you’re in a cellar that’s got a bit of one of the compounds that gives cork tank TCA in there, you get used to it and you don’t smell it on your wines.
Natalie MacLean (11:00):
It’s like wearing the same perfume too long. You accommodate to it.
Keith Grainger (11:04):
You’ve got it. So it’s a problem. Just a few weeks ago I was in Spain. There’s an article on my website on this. And I’ll say straight away, this was a sponsored visit, so I tried to write positively. But there was one winery I went to, which I didn’t write about at all. The organizers came back and said, oh, you haven’t written about so and so and so and so. I said, yeah because one step in the building there was Trichloroanisole, the technical name for the cork taint. And if that is in the building, the chances are it’s going to get in a lot of the wines. There’s no way I want my readers tasting these faulty wines.
Natalie MacLean (11:43):
Wow. Yeah. So that’s what tipped you in the direction of this book. You wanted to explore the whole, not just cork, but other types of things when bad wine happens to good people.
Keith Grainger (11:53):
I think the point is that if you buy a car and there’s something wrong with it, you send it back. If it’s minor, you try to get it fixed. If it’s major, you ask for another car. Anything else, if you buy a tv, a computer or something and it’s substantially faulty, you don’t bear with it, you send it back.
Natalie MacLean
Sure.
Keith Grainger
Now, there’s probably a higher incidence of faults in wines than there are in pretty much every other I’m going to say consumer good. You know what I mean. A lot of the time people don’t know, they don’t recognize it. If they do, a lot of the time they go, I’m not going to make a fuss. I’ll bear with it. Now, if you’re in a wine that’s costing $10, $15 or so a bottle. Fine, that’s a small price to pay. But if you are into buying fine wines, it’s not right, you are getting ripped off. .
Natalie MacLean (12:41):
Yes. Becomes a more serious issue for sure. Now, the story you just told, was the wine itself faulty or was there something else at play perhaps with the stemware?
Keith Grainger (12:53):
No, it was definitely the wine.
Natalie MacLean (12:54):
It was the wine that is faulty. Okay.
Keith Grainger (12:56):
We might talk later about issues that there can be with stemware and how it’s been washed. But in that case, it was the wine itself. And I did check by tipping into a glass, which I noticed to make sure it was clean and the fault was well and truly still there.
Natalie MacLean (13:11):
Okay. Okay. So what was the most surprising thing that you discovered while you were writing this book?
Keith Grainger (13:17):
I have a practical sort of guide. I like things to be black and white. Fairly early into my research, I discovered that when it comes to faults, flaws and taints, things aren’t always black and white. Let me just, at this point, I use the word fault and taint, and I should distinguish between them. Most of us don’t.
So if a wine is not right, you say it’s faulty. In theory, if it’s something to do with the wine making, it’s a fault. If it’s something that’s been picked up from elsewhere, it’s a taint. So if you get a wine that smells of the stables, the horse manure, et cetera, or even the bandaid, that is something that’s been metabolized in the wine by yeast, which are the devices we make a chance to talk about. On the other hand, a wine that is corked – like we have just been looking at – in fact it’s nothing to do with the wine. The wine picks up the off odours, the off taste from an external source. Now, the case of the corked wine, it may well be from the cork, it might not be something else we look at, but it’s actually nothing to do with the actual wine making. So in theory, we should say that wine’s tainted, not faulty, but in practice we don’t. So I generally speaking, just talk about faulty wines.
Natalie MacLean (14:34):
Yeah, it’s good to know the difference though.
Keith Grainger (14:36):
Yeah. But back to the hardest thing is that the boundary in many cases between a wine that’s in good condition and one that’s faulted is very soft. It’s very broad. Now not in the case of corked wine. I’m going to say it’s probably the last time I’ve actually could use that term. Now on I’m going to say Trichloroanisole. And the reason I’m doing that is because the fault might not be caused by the cork. It could be caused by other factors. But if the wine then is Trichloroanisole tainted, it is always faulty. Doesn’t matter what level, it is always faulty.
Natalie MacLean
Okay.
Keith Grainger
On the other hand, a wine that shows some signs of brett aromas brett taste, the compounds metabolize by this rogue yeast brettanomyces, may or may not be faulty depending on the level of compounds in the wine. So this one might be acceptable, that one might not be. And the same with some other faults we look at, while we may or may look at chance to discuss is TDN. When you get that petrol, kerosene, diesel note in a Riesling wine, particularly an aged Riesling, many people regard that as a sign of a good quality wine. But once it goes over a certain boundary, the wine then becomes undrinkable. So a lot of the time it really is a matter of levels of the compounds equals boundaries as we taste the wine.
Natalie MacLean
Right.
Keith Grainger (16:15):
Just on this, something else that I learned as well is that this sounds crazy and it’s very rare. Faulty wines can be paradoxically excellent.
Natalie MacLean (16:26):
How so? Tell us.
Keith Grainger (16:28):
I’m going to give an example of a wine I’ve been fortunate in tasting twice in my life and made one never taste again. Many people they’ve been asked – I’m talking wine writers, critics – have been asked to say, what’s the best wine you’ve ever tasted? The best wine of all time. One wine and vintage comes up quite a few times. It’s Chateau Cheval Blanc 1947. So we’re going back a fair few years now. This wine is technically faulty. It’s got volatile acidity that is through the roof
Natalie MacLean (17:00):
And volatile acidity, how would that smell to the lay person?
Keith Grainger (17:04):
Let’s just say simply vinegar.
Natalie MacLean (17:05):
Vinegar.
Keith Grainger (17:06):
Particularly balsamic rather than sort of a spirit vinegar. Now sometimes, like on an Italian wine, many Italian wines have quite high levels of volatile acidity, and that is part of their Italian-ness, shall we say. But normally in a Bordeaux, it is undesirable. So this Cheval Blanc 47 is so complex. It’s a wine of the heart, a wine of the soul. But not only has it got volatile acidity through the roof, it’s got residual sugar, it’s got all sorts of things. If it were made today, the wine making team would be sacked. There’s no doubt about it. They’d be out of the door.
So it’s very sad to think that what many people say the best wine of all time could never be made again. And let me just very quickly give one more example. Nicolas Joly, many of the wine loves from the Loire Valley know very well. Nicolas Joly is a pretty crazy guy. He’s biodynamic. Wine makers and oenologues tend not to have a kind word to say about him. People who love his wines think he’s absolute God. And I’m just going to give a tasting note from Lisa Perotti-Brown of the 2005 vintage of Nicolas Joly, Clos de la Bergerie. As she says, this wine is acetate – that’s a fault – acid aldehyde – a fault – high volatile acidity – a fault – along with beautiful, rich, mature fruit. The wine tastes delicious [laughter].
Natalie MacLean (18:40):
Wow [laughter]. Way to go with the contradictions. Yeah. And is he also, Nicholas Joly, into natural wines? It’s biodynamic, but the whole natural don’t intervene and don’t add anything.
Keith Grainger (18:52):
Exactly. He keeps his cell phone well away from his wine.
Natalie MacLean (18:54):
Oh really? [laughter].
Keith Grainger (18:56):
Yeah [laughter] But it’s interesting actually, because let me say that my background, when I left school, is arts. I wanted to be a classical musician and I was pretty damn good in the small town, the county where I was brought up. I then went to music college in London and realized that I was crap. I would never be in the first division and in classical music, if you’re not in the first division, you are not anywhere at all. So I had the good sense to say right let’s not pursue this. Although I did spend a few years in record production on pop music of all things. But just going forward from that, I learned my science as I started learning my wine. So many wine makers, oenologues, their background is a first class honours degree in organic chemistry. Mine isn’t. I had to learn all that as I went along, did lots of courses.
But because in many ways I regard myself as an artist, I look at wine from an artist’s point of view. So I think when we look at these faults again. Scientists pinpoint it down to the numbers, the compounds, et cetera. To the wine lover in some ways its only important how the wine tastes in the glass.
Natalie MacLean
Yes.
Keith Grainger
Is it actually enjoyable.
Natalie MacLean
The whole picture.
Kieth Grainger
They become people like Nicolas Joly. It is biodynamics. It is created. The scientists i.e. the people who got their first class honours degree and the PhD of various aspects of organic chemistry. They will poo poo all this natural wine. So will the botanists, they will poo poo biodynamics. There’s a quite interesting book by professor of viticulture at UC Davis, Mark Matthews called Terroir and Other Myths of Wine Growing. And Mark dismisses biodynamic in about half a page.
Natalie MacLean (20:50):
Wow. What’s his issue with it?
Keith Grainger (20:51):
It’s not scientific…
Natalie MacLean (20:52):
Oh, I see…
Keith Grainger (20:53):
To put it very, very simple. And of course, Mark actually dismisses in not quite so few words, the whole concept of terroir, soil minerality coming into wines. And I’m just putting this in a very, very quick precise. But what I’m trying to say is that he would dismiss biodynamics. He would dismiss Nicolas Joly. But you cannot argue that biodynamics can’t produce stunning wines domain. The Romanée de la Conti, Domaine…, Chateau…. go on and on and on. Yes. So just because it can’t be explained by science to my mind, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
Natalie MacLean (21:34):
Exactly. And even if it’s not the actual burying of the bulls horns and the chamomile tea, at least the wine winemaker is paying close attention to those vines through all of the biodynamic practices and getting away from herbicides, pesticides.
Keith Grainger (21:52):
Yes, I agree. Spot on. I’d offer a question. Is this wine great because (a) it’s biodynamic, or (b) because of the attention to detail that the winemakers made. But I will say, just going back to our friend Nicholas Joly in the Loire. He once said to me – I’m paraphrased it slightly here – Keith, he says, you talk about wine maker, I don’t know the meaning of the word. What is a wine maker? The wine is made in the vineyard, and all we do is convert that into something that is delicious.
Natalie MacLean (22:20):
Another sort of zealous, not zealot, but zealous pronouncement. So what is the weirdest wine fault you’ve ever heard of or that we’ve not heard of that would surprise us?
Keith Grainger (22:31):
Right. I’m going to try and be technical. It. Always shut me up when I get technical. It’s probably the fault of mousiness.
Natalie MacLean (22:37):
Mousiness? Okay?
Keith Grainger (22:40):
Which is a lactic acid fault. I’m not going to pronounce the chemical compound responsible. I’m just going to give you the acronym, which is ATHP and another one ETHP. But mousiness is a very strange one. You don’t normally pick it up when you’re smelling it, smelling of the wine. It manifests itself on the palate and particularly the back palate. So what I’m saying is the compounds responsible are not volatile, not ones you normally smell in the air, but you get it after the wine’s been swallowed or after it’s been spat. And the saliva in the mouth has diluted the acids of the wine and therefore raised the pH and the flavours. Now, we don’t normally use to taste it that I’ve got a bug in house in France. It’s an old, what they call coeur de la ferme, the heart of a farm. We’ve always got mice. I trying to keep the house as clean as possible, but we’re in the country, and mice get in. So you learn that mouth smell pretty quickly, that smell of a dirty mouse cage. The nearest we get in something which we’re perhaps used to tasting is popcorn. So particularly noticeable on the back palate, on the finish of the wine. Sometimes get a bit of a hint of dried sausage skin, salami, sometimes a bit of hint of vomit or even just…. So quite a few ways you can manifest itself.
Natalie MacLean (24:07):
So appetizing. This is another reason why we are not tasting wines today. Can’t have this whole discussion and then, oh, let’s turn to. Wow, those are very unusual kinds of aromas. Thank God they’re not prevalent or at least as prevalent as a TCA fault.
Keith Grainger
Yes.
Natalie MacLean
So can we generalize a bit? Can faults sort of fall into two categories, those that are caused by bacteria versus those that are caused by sulfur compounds?
Keith Grainger (24:35):
Not quite that simple actually…
Natalie MacLean (24:37):
I’m trying
Keith Grainger (24:38):
But you’re on the right track. Sulfur we know as a chemical. So let’s include the faults caused by sulfur compounds as chemical faults. Bacteria of course, with the realms of microbiology. So let’s say we’ve got chemical faults and micro biological faults. One of the things we can get, of course, is a physical fault. That’s something quite simple. If you’re to open a wine and you find there’s some contamination in there that insects got in or some bits of grid or dreaded bits of glass or something. That’s something I don’t really discuss in the booking any depth. You could find that in any food industry. One of the commonest causes of food products being recalled, it’s contamination with something or from machines or something like that. But when it comes to the wine itself, chemical or microbiological.
Natalie MacLean (25:27):
Okay. And are inexpensive wines, say, let’s just have an arbitrary cutoff – under $20 – are they more prone to having faults in general than expensive wines?
Keith Grainger (25:40):
No. Anything I say it’s the other way around. The reason it’s quite simple. Inexpensive wines – and I’ve got nothing against some drinking quite often – are what I will call factory wines generally speaking. The economics are not there from to be produced by an artisan, by a small producer. So factory wines, normally the winery, wine factory – what ever you call to – it is pretty well equipped. Quite often they’ve got their own laboratory, they’ve got their own technicians on hand, and they are testing, checking the wines all the time. So in fact, fault free wines are more likely to be found in high-end wines, artisan wines, especially when people want to do wine as natural as possible. And I’m not using the word natural wine just for a minute. But let’s say keep sulfur dioxide levels as low as possible, perhaps not filtered the wine. Now Robert Parker, of course, was always totally adverse to wine filtration, felt and is very detrimental to quality. I would probably agree him but not in all circumstances. But many potential hazards, potential faults, can be excluded by fine filtration. So Brettanomyces, as we mentioned already, probably look at again, it’s something which if you filter the wine for a sterile filter, the fault is much less likely to happen.
Natalie MacLean (27:03):
Okay, I didn’t know that. Wow. So let’s go back to the whole – I’m going to call it corked. I cannot pronounce what you’re saying – but you can talk your language. I’ll talk mine [laughter]. So correct me if anything is wrong here, but it’s when a fungus interacts with the chemical used to sanitize corks and produces the chemical TCA, the acronym for 2, 4 6, trichloroanisole. I should not try. I should not try. But as you said, we can recognize corked wines by their musty mildewy. I always think of an old attic Roman flavor. So is it true that about 5% of bottles are corked?
Keith Grainger (27:42):
Okay, let me answer that question first, then I’ll come back to your definition.
Natalie MacLean (27:45):
Definition. My faulty definition.
Keith Grainger (27:46):
Exactly. 5%, that probably was the case in the 1990s and maybe even in the early two thousands, not so now.
Natalie MacLean
Alright.
Keith Grainger
There was a huge, so-called cork taint crisis in the 1990s and the cork industry realized it really had to get its act together. It was losing the market. So particularly in Australia and New Zealand, the producer say hang on a minute if we’re getting far too many dodgy corks from you guys, we’re going to turn to alternative closures. Many producers initially went on to synthetic cork like stoppers. So-called supreme cork. Particularly in Australia and New Zealand, they went on to screw cap. So the cork industry have perhaps been a little bit arrogant during the 1990s that people had to buy cork to close their wine, then it was realized they didn’t. So they started getting their act together and a huge investment in R&D since then. Absolutely massive.
So I would say today the incidents of corked wines is probably more like 0.5%, but it does vary from country to country, region to region. And in some cases, yes, there is a high incidence, but even 0.5% is too high. I mean, the aim is to get it down to zero obviously, but let me just go back to your introduction as to how the taint is caught, is caused. That was a nice sip of the tongue. I’m going to say straight away. You would probably never have found a corked wine as we refer to it today before the Second World War.
Now, people wrote about cork wine as a famous English writer called George Saintsbury, who did a book called Notes on a Cellar Book in the 1920s. And he refers to a wine being corked, but what he was referring to is pretty definitely not what we think of the corked wine today. That must musty taste, that dry rot, mushrooms, damp sack, et cetera. It was probably something else in the cork because the cork problem. cork tank problem started just after Second World War. We can blame our friends in the agrochemical petrochemical industry.
They started manufacturing pesticides and herbicides that were based on chloro phenols. We don’t need to know what they are particularly, but also bromo phenols. Think of chlorine for chlorophenols and bromine for bromophenol. These herbicides, pesticides start getting made Dow, Monsanto were manufacturing. Let us not put blame here for minute, let’s say quite often people first move into something they don’t know the problems that will ensue in years time. But what happened then is that chlorophenol and bomophenol became airborne. Chlorophenol by the action of fungi, particularly filamentous fungi, those things up for little filaments, those fungi will convert chlorophenols into chloroanisole or TCA and bromophenols into bromoanisole, so-called TBA.
Now that started getting as I say airborne, the trees in the cork forests in Portugal and Spain. They were picking up the chlorophenols, the fungi in the bark would convert it into chloroanoles and thus the problem really got going. It was getting larger and larger from the 1970s, 80s, and probably peaked in the 1990s. The cork industries changed its practices. Well overdue. Say a lot of research. The top end cork producers now have processes that can guarantee that there is no detectable TCA in the cork. I do say detectable because it can be there below detection threshold. And they actually give the wineries by corks on them that guarantee. The problem with that, of course, is those corks cost a fortune and you are not going to get them, as you say, your $15 bottle of wine because the cork is itself costs over a dollar.
Natalie MacLean (32:09):
Okay. Wow. Interesting.
Keith Grainger (32:11):
So that’s the background. So one thing to consider just here then is that if the compounds are present in the cork, they can migrate into the wine. But you can get so-called corked wines – back to my trichloroanisole word – that have never seen a cork in the bottle. Where I was in Bordeaux when my colleague and I were tasted these wines, it probably wasn’t a cork problem. It almost certainly was a winery problem. I say that because I actually visited the property in question a year later, walked through the door and oh yes,
Natalie MacLean
You could smell it.
Keith Grainger
I smell and I’m straight there. Now I want to just look briefly at two areas. California, very familiar to you, and Bordeaux, very familiar to me. During the 1960s, 70s, Bordeaux was started to pick itself up after World War Two. ’61 was a great vintage, ’66 was pretty good. ’82, of course, if we go forward a bit, fantastic vintage. Lots of wineries started reinvesting. The buildings had been crumbling. They were not in the best of state, which in some way I think is not good. But it turned out that the reinvestment wasn’t good because quite often they were having lots of the timber work taken out and new timber put in. The timbers were treated with bromophenols. Back to where I was. So immediately then these start getting converted by filamentous fungi and coming into the wines. And I think I could name these without any risk of you or I getting sued, there were some big problems in Bordeaux in the late 1980s, early nineties, Chateau … for example, the contamination of their…, their cellar was so bad, they had to have it pulled down and entirely rebuilt. There are problems with Chateau Canon, Chateau Latour et cetera. Big, big problems.
One of the things with Bordeaux as well. The way the system works is that they were, and still are to a degree, detached from the market. The wines would be sold by brokers into what’s called the Place de Bordeaux. In other words, they would never see a customer. And it’s only when people started writing about things, reports start getting back and they shrugged their shoulders, of course, and had a problem. But when the person after person started saying this that they started to act. Now, of course, it wasn’t just Bordeaux. Many other wine regions and California number cellars suffered in the 1990s. Not that long after they did so well at the Judgment of Paris, Chateau Montelena had big problems with TCA, The contamination. These were picked up by some writers initially dismissed, but when the technical team went to the cellars, they found the problems. So then they had to start taking out woodwork, shaving off barrels, all sorts of things. I must say California generally today is pretty clean. And all the wineries I’ve mentioned, I must say it once again, they are ultra clean cellars and back in top form.
Natalie MacLean (35:27):
Oh, that’s a good thing. Wow. So although the incidence of corked bottles has diminished, I think you were talking in another interview where it was either corked or all faulted wines, you estimate it could be costing the industry anywhere from a billion to 10 billion. What was that about?
Keith Grainger (35:45):
Yeah, the 10 billion figure is spread over a number of years, actually is from research papers that’s spread over eight years and going back a few years. But even today, researchers on behalf of the European Union estimate that the trichloroanisole contamination, the corked wines is probably costing 700 million Euros a year. So we’re trying to figure…
Natalie MacLean (36:09):
That over a billion for sure, when you translate it. Yeah, absolutely. And I found it fascinating. You made some analogies that how minuscule amount of corkiness it takes to ruin a wine. So one was about wheat. What was that analogy?
Keith Grainger (36:25):
Okay, just the scientific five seconds before we go into that. For a corked wine, the compound are so volatile that a tiny amount, i.e. just over one part per trillion, will have a tainted wine that you can taste. So my analogy back to wheat is that will be the equivalent of one grain of wheat in a hundred thousand tons or one cube of sugar in 60 Olympic sized swimming pools. It’s been estimated not by me that a couple of table spoonful of this taint is enough to cause a problem in all the wines in the world.
Natalie MacLean (37:06):
Geez. Oh my goodness. That’s incredible. Wow. And yet you add too that cork can absorb some of the bad smell. So does that help, or is it still masking the problem in not a good way.
Keith Grainger (37:19):
This is interesting. I reasonably befriended some of the technical guys, Amorin, who are the largest cork producer in the world, I’d say reasonably friendly. Obviously, when I’ve been doing research, you’ve got to get into these guys so you understand the way they work. And Paolo Lopez, technical director, always says that servers, waiters, sommeliers when drawing the cork from a bottle will often smell the cork. And if the wine smells at all musty, they will reject the wine. But it can be that the wine itself was cork tainted, but the cork has absorbed the taint from the wine. So it’s like a blotting paper. So what we’d all be looking at is you need to dissect the entire cork. If it smells musty at the wine end, it’s probably come from the wine. If it smells musty through the cork or even at the top end away from the wine, it’s probably been a cook problem. That’s been ultra simplistic.
Natalie MacLean (38:18):
Sure, sure, sure. And do screw caps eliminate your risk of your wine being corked? I guess you said it can come from other sources, so not right.
Keith Grainger (38:26):
They substantially reduce the risk, there’s no doubt. But yes, if it’s present in the wine, so it’s come from a contaminated winery, you can still get it. And I’ve found numerous incidences of wine sealed with a screw cap, which have got the trichloroanisole taint in there.
Natalie MacLean (38:42):
Right, right. And you’ve talked about this, as have I in the past. And a corked wine is so damaging to a winery’s reputation because someone who doesn’t know the wine can open it, it smells like a musty attic, and they think I just don’t like this wine. They’re not a good wine maker.
So how can we tell when a wine is mildly corked and just sort of depressing the aromas a bit because it is on a spectrum versus this wine just isn’t really aromatic or doing much.
Keith Grainger (39:09):
Okay, first of all, the damage to reputation can be very real. And of course, you, I, and I’m sure most of your listeners would say straight away if the wine is so-called corked. But the general consumer, they may think I don’t like this wine. This is a rubbish wine. This is a cracked wine. I’m not going to buy anymore this bottle, or I’m not going to buy anymore from this producer even. And imagine how cheated you feel when you’ve got wines in your cellar. You’d be carefully nurturing for the last 15, 20 years maybe. And you open the bottle it’s corked. Excuse me.
Natalie MacLean (39:42):
Never again. Exactly.
Keith Grainger (39:44):
Never again. Exactly. So the damage that can be done and I suppose as with all faults, especially today with podcasts, blogs, et cetera, nothing is talked about as much as wine. There’s no other food product, no other drink that is discussed quite as much as wine. So the word gets round in seconds.
Natalie MacLean (40:05):
It’s quite the grape vine.
Keith Grainger (40:06):
There’s a problem here. But to the other part of your question though, how do you know if it’s a low level taint? Well, sometimes you don’t. These TCA compounds and TBA compound, if it affects a wine at a very low level, you don’t get the mustiness, you don’t get the damp sack, you don’t get the mushrooms, you don’t get the dry rot. But the wine will taste flat as though somebody’s been sucking all the aromas or the flavours out of the wine. And this, of course, is a big problem to the industry because if it’s a high level taint, then people may well complain. But if it’s a low level, then almost everyone is just saying, oh, not be much of this wine. It is under delivering well and truly. So that is when they really fear the problem. Back to my friends at Amorin, again, they do say that the TCA problem is not going to go away, but as far as cork is concerned, the problem is getting diminished, diminished and diminished. But the problem is always there for aerial contamination. Let me just say, it’s not just wine. It affects so many other things. It affects water,
Natalie MacLean (41:16):
Tap water? How does it affect tap water? Your water will taste like a musty attic?
Keith Grainger (41:23):
Spot on. There two things there to consider. Firstly, of course, that tap water is very often chlorinated, Chlorine, of course, back to my chlorophenol is one of the sources of TCA. Back to my little visit to the winery in Spain just a few weeks ago, as soon as I walked in through the door that I smelled mustiness, I smelled chlorine which they were using as a cleaner. A winery should never, ever, ever use chlorine as a cleaner. Big, big, big mistake. So it can get in the water from chlorine, water being chlorinated, but also of course more and more nowadays water comes through plastic pipes. Plastic of course have got phenols in. So once again, the contamination can come from the pipes. It is a growing problem.
Natalie MacLean (42:13):
Wow, that’s fascinating.
Natalie MacLean(42:20):
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Keith. Here are my takeaways. Number one, Keith was very helpful in his discussion of one of the main flaws of wine when it’s corked, especially when it’s only mildly so. As he mentioned, if it affects a wine at a very low level, you don’t get the mustiness and mushrooms or dry rot, but the wine will taste flat as though somebody’s been sucking all the aromas and flavours out of it. This is a big problem for the industry. Number two, Keith had a terrific way not only of describing the main faults of wine, but also how you identify them. He was precise without being overly technical. He summarized them as falling under three categories. Number one, microbial, number two, chemical. And number three, physical. Each fault is caused by different agents and each has characteristics that can be smelled, tasted, and / or identified visually. And finally, number three, I was surprised to learn that inexpensive wines are actually less prone to faults, but Keith’s explanation makes sense as to why that’s so. They’re produced in a more factory type manner as opposed to the artisan wines and natural wines which have more room for error at the higher end.
In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Keith, links to his website and books, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now no matter where you live. You’ll also find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me called The Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them forever at nataliemaclean.com/class. That’s all in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com /268 slash. Email me if you have a sip, tip, question or if you’ve read my book or are in the process of reading it at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you.
If you missed episode 96, go back and take a listen. I chat with Janice Beaton about pairing white wine with blue cheese, which of course is injected with the good type of mould, not the faulty kind. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
Janice Beaton (44:39):
A sweet wine and a blue cheese. They’re made for each other. The acidity, that’s a very important element as well with the blue cheese. So I think that the stone fruit, the sort of tropical nature, the sweetness, it stood out so well. I was very impressed.
Natalie MacLean (44:53):
It does. It works very well. And I wouldn’t have thought about this pairing either, because this is such a light, beautiful wine that I would think of for a pairing with cheese, but it does work. It’s got that off dry, the acid. It actually holds its own.
Janice Beaton (45:06):
We both agreed it’s refreshing, it’s light, and that was my concern. I often think weight when I pair. And this is not a weighty wine in the way that this is a weighty cheese. So I thought it might just knock it over and really sort of gallop over the top of it and it didn’t at all. So very pleasantly surprised.
Natalie MacLean (45:32):
You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Keith. If you liked this episode, please email or tell one friend about it this week. Especially someone who’d be interested in the wines, tips, and stories we shared. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on their favourite podcast app.
Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a delicious flawless wine.
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full body bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at nataliemaclean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.
